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Demand for aluminum foil hats skyrockets in EU
9/11? It Never Happened
Across Europe, conspiracy theories are all the rage. Germany is the latest to be swept up by the craze
By Stefan Theil NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
To get a sense of how deep mistrust of the United States runs in Germany, take a look at the bookshelves. Two years after September 11, German bookstores are flooded with such works as “The CIA and September 11,” in which a former government minister of Research and Technology, Andreas von Bulow, insinuates that the U.S. and Israeli intelligence services blew up the World Trade Center from the inside. The two Boeings, he claims, were flown in by remote control as a cover-up. The whole thing was a cynical plot by America’s neoconservatives to take over the world.
It's not only the Fritzies. See last Sunday's al-Guardian, where Brit MP Michael Meacher expounds on the same talking points.
With Iraq in apparent chaos, America is returning to the United Nations in search of allies. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is regrouping, just as new global conflicts may be brewing over North Korea and Iran. Before things started going to hell, it was fine (and fun) to speculate about American perfidy, especially since some of the authors didn’t much care whether readers believed them or not. But now hard decisions must be made, with the prospect that Europeans will increasingly be swept up in America’s troubles abroad. Perhaps that explains, in Germany at least, why mainstream journalists and politicians have been quick to denounce the crackpots. Even Der Spiegel — usually good for a conspiracy theory or two — last week ran an unusually sober cover story debunking them. Now that the game has turned so serious, whimsy seems suddenly out of place.
Posted by: Big Daddy Cool 2003-09-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=18682